The Greek Church in Latin and Venetian Cyprus 1191–1570

The Greek Church faced considerable problems following the Latin Conquest of Cyprus and the establishment of the Lusignan dynasty. Much of its property was impounded by the new Latin rulers, in the 1220s its bishoprics were reduced to four, with each bishop subject to a Latin diocesan. Under the provisions of the Bulla Cypria of 1260 it accepted papal primacy and ceased to have its own archbishop following the death of Germanos. Limits were placed on the numbers of monks in Greek monasteries and the refusal of Greek monks to accept the validity of Latin unleavened communion bread resulted in the martyrdom of 13 of them in 1231. Despite this, however, the Greek Church overcame these challenges and even strengthened its position in the later Lusignan and Venetian periods. Several reasons explain its ability to survive and maintain the allegiance of most of the population. The small number of Latins on Cyprus, concentrated mainly in the towns of Nicosia and Famagusta, made them fear absorption into the far more numerous Greeks and so disposed to tolerate a Greek Uniate Church that formally accepted papal primacy. The great distance separating Cyprus from Rome and Avignon together with increasing absenteeism among the Latin clergy from the later fourteenth century onwards made it impossible to enforce papal directives. The growing Ottoman threat from the late fifteenth century onwards likewise made the Venetian authorities on Cyprus reluctant to implement papal rulings that would anger the Greek majority. In addition, the Greek Church of Cyprus maintained contact with the Greek patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria, all outside the areas under Latin rule, and so was not isolated from the Orthodox Christians subject to the patriarch of Constantinople.

Juan del Encina’s Nativity Eclogues: A New English Translation

Juan del Encina has long been recognized as a crucial figure in Iberian drama, yet few of his works have been translated into English. Encina wrote plays, poetry, and music in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and scholars have traditionally regarded Encina’s writing as a turning point in early Spanish drama, both because of the secular material included in his plays and because Encina supervised the publication of his own works. He is also credited with contributing to the professionalization of Spanish theater by depicting the court of his patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Alba, as a site of theatrical performance. Encina’s innovative dramas interweave courtly, religious, and pastoral drama with metafictional elements. Atiya presents translations of two plays included in Encina’s 1496 Cancionero, a printed compilation of poetic, dramatic, and musical works.

Mourning Madeleine and Margaret: Dress and Meaning in the Memorials for Two Scottish Queens, 1537 and 1541

While the Scottish royal household participated in the wider development of mourning traditions in the late fifteenth century and employed mourning dress as a political tool from at least the turn of the sixteenth century, surviving evidence is extremely limited. Records for the funerals of Queens Madeleine de Valois ( d. 1537) and Margaret Tudor ( d. 1541) yield the earliest extensive material details for the employment of mourning displays in Scotland. These two funerals both honoured foreign-born queens, they took place only four years apart and they were organised within the same household—yet their use of mourning dress and material display diverged notably. Variations in the design and display of both formal and everyday mourning dress were used to transmit distinct messages and themes, in order to address the particular political circumstances and needs of each death. Comparison between the details of these Scottish funerals and examples from England, France and the Low Countries helps to place Scottish practice within wider traditions and highlights a common emphasis on mourning displays as a central aspect of political discourse and diplomacy at key moments of change and loss.

Romantic Dissolution vs. Artistic Disillusion in Robert Browning’s Andrea del Sarto

The present paper sets out to explore Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue introducing Andrea del Sarto (1486- 1531), a late fifteenth-century Florentine painter who was praised for his technical skills in painting but who lacked a spiritual dimension in his art, compared to the works of his contemporaries, Michelangelo Bunarroti (1475-1564) and Raphael (1483-1520).

Language Change in Two Early English Printing Houses: Richard Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde, 1490-1530

<p>The introduction of printing to England in the late fifteenth century dramatically altered the form and function of the written English language, as the production of texts increased exponentially within a very short time period. This shift from manuscript to print is characterised as the beginning of Early Modern English, when standardisation and modernisation of text began in earnest and neared completion by 1700. William Caxton, England’s first printer and an enthusiast of literature, is credited with making genuine efforts towards ‘Standard English’ in his short career; his immediate successors, however, are traditionally regarded as reverting to irregular spelling forms and hindering the process of modernisation and standardisation which was slowly developing in the fifteenth century. The aim of this thesis is to examine the language of two of Caxton’s successors – his former apprentice Wynkyn de Worde, and de Worde’s chief competitor Richard Pynson – for signs of modernisation and standardisation within their works. This is achieved through the close study of ten language forms, both morphological and orthographic, between 1490 and 1530. Thirty-six texts printed by de Worde and Pynson were selected from a variety of genres, including devotional works, sermons, legal texts, travel diaries, histories, and philosophical works, sourced by Pynson and de Worde from medieval manuscripts, contemporary translations, and original compositions, to represent the work of the two printing houses. For each printer, two ten-page samples of two texts were taken from five-year intervals and examined in facsimile, and from this data a number of trends and processes can be identified. Innovative, or modern, variants of the five morphological forms tended to be already common in the first decade of printing, and by 1530 were firmly established, whereas the orthographic forms began to modernise mostly after 1500, and were less regular than the morphological forms studied. Both morphology and orthography within the texts of Pynson and de Worde show clear development away from the forms favoured by Caxton and the Chancery scribes and towards more modern forms. Textual evidence strongly suggests that this trend was due more to the increasingly modern copy-texts of the works produced, and by extension the spelling practices of contemporary writers and translators, rather than concerted efforts of the printing house towards implementing an orthographic standard.</p>

Language Change in Two Early English Printing Houses: Richard Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde, 1490-1530

<p>The introduction of printing to England in the late fifteenth century dramatically altered the form and function of the written English language, as the production of texts increased exponentially within a very short time period. This shift from manuscript to print is characterised as the beginning of Early Modern English, when standardisation and modernisation of text began in earnest and neared completion by 1700. William Caxton, England’s first printer and an enthusiast of literature, is credited with making genuine efforts towards ‘Standard English’ in his short career; his immediate successors, however, are traditionally regarded as reverting to irregular spelling forms and hindering the process of modernisation and standardisation which was slowly developing in the fifteenth century. The aim of this thesis is to examine the language of two of Caxton’s successors – his former apprentice Wynkyn de Worde, and de Worde’s chief competitor Richard Pynson – for signs of modernisation and standardisation within their works. This is achieved through the close study of ten language forms, both morphological and orthographic, between 1490 and 1530. Thirty-six texts printed by de Worde and Pynson were selected from a variety of genres, including devotional works, sermons, legal texts, travel diaries, histories, and philosophical works, sourced by Pynson and de Worde from medieval manuscripts, contemporary translations, and original compositions, to represent the work of the two printing houses. For each printer, two ten-page samples of two texts were taken from five-year intervals and examined in facsimile, and from this data a number of trends and processes can be identified. Innovative, or modern, variants of the five morphological forms tended to be already common in the first decade of printing, and by 1530 were firmly established, whereas the orthographic forms began to modernise mostly after 1500, and were less regular than the morphological forms studied. Both morphology and orthography within the texts of Pynson and de Worde show clear development away from the forms favoured by Caxton and the Chancery scribes and towards more modern forms. Textual evidence strongly suggests that this trend was due more to the increasingly modern copy-texts of the works produced, and by extension the spelling practices of contemporary writers and translators, rather than concerted efforts of the printing house towards implementing an orthographic standard.</p>

“Byzance apre`s Byzance” and Post-Byzantine Art from the Late Fifteenth Century through the Eighteenth Century

The study of the post-Byzantine world is now regarded as a field in its own right, separate from Byzantine studies or Renaissance studies. However, the scope of the discipline and the meaning of the term post-Byzantine—its conceptual, geographical, and chronological limits—remain unsettled. For art historians, the term typically refers to certain tendencies (especially in iconography and style) observable in and around one of a few centers of activity or spheres of influence within the Orthodox Christian world, typically identified as Ottoman-held vs. Venetian-held lands, or as Venetian Crete, Mt. Athos, and the “periphery” (i.e., everywhere else). Scholarly attention has also focused primarily on portable icons. Broadening the field to consider more types of objects across the whole geography under scrutiny, we can consider how art and ideas were received and adapted over time and across regions.

Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD: Part I

Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD is a three-part series, which provides an account of all known individual Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics in the late medieval era and details their temporalities, occupations, familial associations, and broader networks. The ultimate goal of the series is the full contextualisation of all available historical records relating to Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics alongside the genealogical record that can be extracted by twenty-first century science – that being the science of Y-DNA. The Papal Registers, in particular, record numerous occurrences of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, predominantly in the dioceses of Cill Dalua (Killaloe) and Osraí (Ossory), from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. Yet, no small intrigue surrounds their emergence. Part I of Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD examines the context surrounding the earliest appointments of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, which is in neither Cill Dalua nor Osraí but the diocese of Luimneach (Limerick). Once that context is understood, a pattern of associations emerges. A ‘coincidental’ twenty-first century surname match from the Fitzpatrick Y-DNA project leads to a review of the relationship between the FitzMaurice of Ciarraí (Kerry) clerics and Jordan Purcell, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne (1429-1472). The ‘coincidence’ then leads to an examination of a close Y-DNA match between men of the surnames Purcell and Hennessey. That match, coupled with the understanding that Nicholas Ó hAonghusa (O’Hennessey), elected Bishop of Lismore and Waterford (1480-1483) but with opposition, is considered a member of Purcell’s household, transforms the ‘coincidence’ into a curiosity. Part I morphs into a conversation, likely uncomfortable for some, relating to clerical concubinage, illegitimacy, and the ‘lubricity’ of the prioress and her nuns at the Augustinian nunnery of St Catherine's O’Conyll. The nunnery was located at Mainistir na gCailleach Dubh (Monasternagalliaghduff), which lay just a stone’s throw from where Bishop Jordan Purcell and Matthew Mac Giolla Phádraig, the first Mac Giolla Phádraig cleric recorded in the Papal Registers, emerged. Part I makes no judgments and draws no firm conclusions but prepares the reader for Part II by ending with some questions. Do the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics of Osraí, who rose to prominence in the late-fifteenth century, have their origins in Deasmhumhain (Desmond)? Could the paternal lineages of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be, at least from the mid-fourteenth century, with the house of the Geraldine FitzMaurice clerics of Ciarraí? And, could some of the modern-day descendants of the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be those Costigans, FitzGeralds, and Fitzpatricks who are found under haplotype R-A1488?

Social Influences on the Typographic Medium in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation Period in Bratislava, the Capital of Hungary

Over the centuries, the typographic medium and book printing responded to the political, economic, cultural, and social conditions very sensitively. The author deals with social influences on the development of book printing in Bratislava from the fifteenth century when the first printer is documented in the town. She ponders the reasons for the long absence of typographic activities in Bratislava from the late fifteenth century to the early seventeenth century. Paradoxically, the Reformation gave an impetus to the further development of book printing in Bratislava, as a Catholic printing house was established there in direct response to Reformation printing in Hungary. Therefore, the author also examines the conditions of Reformation printing to which the beginnings of publishing activities are tied in the territory of Slovakia. In the second part of the study, she focuses on Catholic Revival literature published in Bratislava in the seventeenth century, which played an important role in implementing Catholic reforms in Hungary.